Nowhere is this more evident than in the Extended Regulated Area of New South Wales – the Greater Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra regions. It is estimated that established local urban amenity markets ( Sydney Basin ) have been oversupplied since 2002 and that this market’s capacity is between 500,000 and 600,000 tonnes per year (input). The industry believes that this market has reached a natural limit and will now only grow slowly in line with economic growth and ongoing marketing initiatives. The latest (2006) estimates of NSW supply are over 1 million tonnes per annum.

Consultants were engaged to prepare a critical issues paper to make the case for appropriate government and industry policies and actions that would allow the NSW Recycled Organics Industry to overcome structural barriers to the expansion of markets recovered from urban waste streams. In preparing the critical issues paper, the objectives were to:

• Promote the need for NSW Government policies and actions that support the required transition from supply push to demand pull;
• Devise a transitional plan to use excess stock of compost to establish viable regional recycled organics market demand in horticulture and agriculture, without jeopardising supply to local urban markets;
• Justify and promote the proposed transitional plan to the NSW Government;
• Understand the gate fees required to achieve NSW Government diversion targets based on predicted supply of raw materials, the economics of processing, the availability of markets for recycled organics products and industry predictions of market growth; and,
• Engage the industry; local government and state government in integrating the implications of the gate fee model into model contracts and future contract negotiations.